


Little Game

by thecrowfamily



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Divorced parents, Drabble, Family Angst, Fluff, It starts sad but gets cute I promise, M/M, Oikawa's Parents are the divorced ones, platonic iwaoi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 04:30:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6359395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thecrowfamily/pseuds/thecrowfamily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Oikawa Tooru doesn't have a family. Not at home, at least.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. breaking

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic! It's a bit bumpy and won't be too long, but I hope you enjoy it!

Tooru’s mother bought board games like they were filling the hole in her family where love should be. 

They inhabited a polished cupboard, overstuffed with everything from Monopoly to Connect 4. Towering, cramped into the small space haphazardly. Some bought at convenience stores on a whim, others ordered online when found on top selling lists. Some were simple and standard, a worn chess set or a deck of cards; others were new and flashy, with an instruction manual that could be mistaken for a novel and all sorts of pieces. 

Every other Friday was game night. Every other Friday, Oikawa Tooru wore an emotionless stare that bore into his mother, and his mother painted on a smile as effortlessly as she painted her makeup. She would grin and laugh out loud, dripping with enthusiasm as she dragged Tooru and an optional guest into a game that lasted for an eternity. Her son never cracked a smile, never chuckled, never betrayed any reaction to his mother's antics. But for Tooru’s mother, that was okay. It was all okay, as long as Tooru participated in the game. 

Because normal families played board games, and Oikawa Kazashi would do anything if it meant that her family was normal.

.o.o.o.

The habit had begun when Tooru’s father had left. To say that the marriage had fallen apart wasn't quite accurate; what they had had was never quite strong enough to need any hacking apart in the first place. It wasn't an ancient city, built strong but weathered and grown to be unable to take the storm. What had been there never shined unless polished for parties.  
It was frayed rope, never built to absorb the shock of a tug.  
It was an exhausted horse, weak, laying down to die.  
Maybe it had been the money, or the methods, the terms of the relationship.  
Oikawa's parents had never been compatible, and when his father had stormed out for good it might have been a relief. 

It might have, if we were not all still human. 

It might have, if not for the blood in Tooru's veins, and the memories of ruffled hair and whispered encouragement and bandaged knees that strung the hearts of the broken family together in a way that was impossible to explain. 

.o.o.o.

Tooru's father used to take him to the planetarium where he worked. 

He held a job maintaining the projector, keeping the machines functioning and accurate. Tooru never knew the specifics; he was too young to know much more than the fact that his father put the stars into the sky, that he had the power to put whole galaxies into place on the ceiling of a modest looking dome in the corner of town.

Tooru grew up on his father's shoulders, watching in wonder as the lights shifted and his father's deep voice breathed out the names of landmarks in space. He would be hoisted into place, feeling as if the world was held in his pudgy hands with the help of his softly smiling father. 

Tooru fell in love with the stars alongside the dad who left his family when his son was only nine years old. 

Oikawa Tooru hasn't been to a planetarium since then. 

.o.o.o.

What he felt most was shock.  
It wasn't as if Tooru hadn't heard the arguing that had plagued the couple for all of their relationship. It wasn't as if he hadn't been aware of the thick tension that had hung around them for years.  
But the reality of it- the slamming door, the vacant chair at the dining table, and the strange woman in formal dress who had sat him down with his mother, explaining in a voice that held no genuine sympathy that he wouldn't be living with his father anymore, that his mother would be taking care of him instead. She had given him a smile that made Tooru’s stomach turn, patting the hands that he had clenched on the table and reassuring him that he would still be able to visit his father on occasion. 

The ringing in his ears dissolved into another noise, the sound of wood crashing, a dull thud that sang in echo.

The sound of a door swinging shut. 

.o.o.o.

That night, Tooru has a nightmare. He climbs into his parents’- no, _his mother’s_ bed like he would when he was years younger and inches shorter, settling himself in an empty space on the mattress that hadn’t been there before. 

His father’s warmth, usually seeping into the mattress and surrounding Tooru and his mother, is long absent. The pillow is slowly losing his scent of mint leaves and pine trees, a combination of the shampoo and cologne that would never sit on the countertop of the family's bathroom again. 

Tooru curls in on himself in the open darkness, clutching an old alien plush to his stomach in the suffocating cold. The air feels like ice, frozen and solid. Everything about his situation is soaked in vulnerability.

His mother hugs him from behind in a comforting gesture, but Tooru can only shiver at the feeling of her breath down his neck. 

.o.o.o.

After a few months of living in stunned silence, Tooru's mom started sleeping around. 

There was no talking around it, no euphemisms or sugarcoating. It was what it was. Lovers would stumble into her home, lips locked and hands travelling across the expanse of her body. Exhausted men with their eyes glazed over, either unaware that she was a single mother or too drunk to care. At first it was simply any stranger that looked at her for more than a moment in whichever club she had retired to- eventually, she started clinging to men for longer. No stable relationships yet, but boyfriends who lasted a week before things fell apart. Men whose names she knew but eventually forgot. 

What she was doing couldn't be called “making love”. There was no love involved in the matter. She fucked men. They left her. There was nothing else to it. 

Tooru never knew about any of this until he was fourteen and his mother forgot to suggest that he stay the night at his precious Iwa-chan’s house. He heard moaning, the sound of a bed creaking. By then, he was old enough to know what it meant and young enough to be just as scared as he was disgusted. 

In the morning, his mother is hungover and bruised about the crook of her neck. Tired from lack of sleep, Tooru avoids her eyes and flinches away from her touch. She doesn't notice. 

.o.o.o.

Tooru visits his father only once after the divorce. His hair is grayer than Tooru remembers, his face wearing more folds than his son has ever seen. The smile on his face when he opens the door seems broken and out of place, less of a _“Good to see you”_ and more of an _“I miss you”_ , more of an _“I'm sorry.”_

An unfamiliar scent fills the air around him, different from the smell of mint and pine that had burrowed itself into Tooru's mind, a memory that was so easily recalled when he thought of his father, to the point that it had become a reflex. The home he shuffles into smells like lavender fragrance, and his father emanates the scent like perfume. 

A woman is in the kitchen of his dad’s home, introduced as Oikawa Hoshi with a wave of a ring adorned hand, and Tooru can almost see the lavender aura around her, feel flowers sprout at her feet when she smiles. The raw happiness that surrounds her when she leans into Tooru’s father's- no, _her husband's_ shoulder is unmistakably genuine.

Tooru can't force himself to hate her. 

.o.o.o.

Oikawa Sora, Tooru's father, sends his son a letter in the mail.

He is moving to Nagoya for work.

He has a great opportunity to delve into research about his favorite subject, space. 

He will not be able to see Tooru anymore.

It isn't worth the hassle. 

He apologizes.

He wishes Tooru the best, and says goodbye.

.o.o.o.

The letter is in torn apart scraps on Tooru’s floor. Between the tears leaking out of his eyes and the sandpaper of his throat, he begins to forget, to relearn, to replace. 

.o.o.o.

Oikawa Tooru doesn't have a family. Not at home, at least.


	2. things that burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is becoming more of a drabble fic. I'll try to put in more plot later in the fic, as this is no longer a one shot. Yay.

Tooru never really was one for letting go of things. Old grudges had a way for burrowing themselves into his bones, arguably misplaced hatred finding itself a home in his head. He still fumed at the thought of a little boy who had happened to knock his ice cream out of his hands in the park when he was seven, still clung to old fantasies of aliens even after his age ascended far into his teens. Even so, Tooru’s memory was slipping in the weeks following his father's letter.

At first it was smaller details, like how rough or soft the skin of his father's hands was, how long he usually kept his fingernails, what habits he showed when he focused. The days wore on and then it was the sound of his voice, the exact color of his eyes. Whether or not he'd ruffle Tooru’s hair. The curve of his nose. The tilt of his smile, and if he'd show his teeth. The cadence of his laugh. 

It scared Tooru, to say the least. If that was what you could call the empty, gnawing ache in his gut whenever a detail slipped his mind and he was forced to face the reality of the fact that his father was gone, and he wasn't going to come back.

But Iwaizumi- he helped, in the ways he could, and the ways he felt were appropriate. Sometimes with a punch in the arm, a groan of It doesn't matter, dumbass, and others with comfort, or a solution. Hours spent in front of a computer screen, seeking out some sort of social media that belonged to his father so Oikawa could catch a glimpse of his face, or tracking down his phone number so maybe- just maybe- he could hear his father's voice again. 

Oikawa only calls his father once. It takes days, weeks of psyching himself up. Of Iwaizumi rubbing his back, telling him to be brave, you're brave, Oikawa, I know you are. 

It's a receptionist who picks up. 

He asks for Oikawa Sora, he is put on hold, and the phone changes hands. Oikawa's heart ties itself in a knot, his stomach rolls uneasily. At his side, Iwaizumi is watching him. The voice in his ear is like rich chocolate. Tooru feels his eyes sting, and his words catch in his throat.

“Hello?”

.o.o.o.

It was hard, but Iwaizumi helped. Iwaizumi, who was as sharp and as smooth as obsidian, a volcano in the sense that he was ready to explode but restored the earth to a state of richness, so everything was blooming around him if you waited long enough. Iwaizumi, who was rough, the ocean crashing against the shore in white frosted waves, but made Tooru better, turning broken edges into smooth ones, helping his best friend become sea glass.

Iwaizumi had spiked up hair, green eyes, caramel colored skin that turned red at his ears when he was exhausted and embarrassed. Iwaizumi had rough, scarred hands and a heart big enough to keep the two of them afloat. Iwaizumi lent some parts of himself to Tooru, and Oikawa, who knew himself to be petty, controlling, weak and toxic, could never really understand what he had done to deserve it. He sees Iwaizumi in red, burning sunsets, in storms, in forest fires, but also in suffocating hugs, warm food, in rushing waterfalls and trees too tall for him to make out where they end. He sees him in autumn, black coffee, in that feeling when you've laughed so hard that your stomach aches and your lungs burn. Iwaizumi was simultaneously the solidity of the earth beneath his feet and the vastness of the sky. Extraordinary, dependable, amazing, remarkable, somehow rough and soft at the same time. 

Oikawa wonders why Hajime stays.


End file.
